This invention relates to the disposal of radioactive waste.
Radioactive waste generated by the nuclear industry must be disposed of safely and a convenient method of disposing of low activity waste is to store it in sealed drums in underground salt or clay bed depositories, or to deposit the drum on the sea bed. During filling of the drums care must be taken to avoid contamination of the environment and the generally accepted procedure is to seal the closed drum to the initial waste dispenser (which may be a glovebox) before withdrawing the lid and dispenser closure into the dispenser in back-to-back manner, thereby to form an extension of the dispenser; after charging the waste, the drum and dispenser are both closed before breaking the seal between them. Conventional mechanisms for the procedure are complex and expensive, for example, the lid is secured to the drum (and to the dispenser closure in back-to-back manner) by a latch mechanism which calls for a complex drum structure and sealing means. Whilst the conventional mechanisms are acceptable in circumstances where it is required to be able to regain access to the drums, the cost of such complexity is unacceptable where no further access is required, for example, where the drums are to be disposed of on the sea bed, so an object of the invention is to provide a safe method of charging low activity waste into simply constructed drums having the conventional plug-in kind of closures.